


Behind the Scary Door

by Duck_Life



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Friendship/Love, Homophobic Language, M/M, Not Quite Confession, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 13:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Richie and Eddie confront the monster behind the door marked 'Scary.'





	Behind the Scary Door

“Jesus fuck,” Eddie yelps, slamming the VERY SCARY door. “Now what?”

“Uh.” Richie glances between their last two options. “Bill and I did NOT SCARY AT ALL last time and it was a fuckin’ nightmare. Let’s do SCARY.” He twists the knob and pulls the middle door open.

It’s another dark room. Richie braces himself to see another dismembered pair of legs hobbling out, but instead it’s… a kid. Wavy hair, bright eyes— the kind of 1980s heartthrob Molly Ringwald was always falling for. “Hey,” the kid says, grinning all friendly-like in the dark. “Wanna play Street Fighter?”

Something scrapes at the back of Richie’s mind. Eddie, sinister and scary—  _ You wanna play loogie _ ? 

“Rich, who the fuck is that?” Eddie asks, staring at the kid beckoning from the SCARY room. 

Richie swallows. “His name’s, uh, Connor,” he says, a wave of shame hitting him like so much gravel. “He’s…” Bowers’s cousin. “He’s no one.”

“No one?” Connor asks, cocking his head to one side. “You didn’t treat me like ‘no one’ at the arcade, Richie. I thought we hit it off. You still remember that cool handshake we did, right?” Richie wants to scream and swear and shout, but all his Voices have abandoned him at the moment. He feels like just some kid, standing in the arcade, humiliated and alone. 

He’s not alone this time, though. “ _ Who _ is this?” Eddie asks again. He doesn’t even sound scared, just annoyed. He rounds on Richie. “Did you have friends besides the seven of us?” 

“No, not really,” Richie says, trying to talk normally even though his tongue feels dry and his heart is pounding. “It doesn’t matter. We played Street Fighter, like, one time. Big deal.” 

“But you wanted to play again, didn’t you, Richie?” Connor taunts him. “You wanted to play lots and lots of games with the other boys, didn’t you, Richie? Spin the Bottle… Seven Minutes in Heaven…”

“Shut the fuck up,” Richie spits. The cavern feels like it’s spinning. He claps his hands over his ears like he can hide from Connor’s cruel words. And the worst part is that Eddie is _right_ _there_. Maybe Eddie already thought he was disgusting and weird for all the rude jokes and gross stories but now it’s all out there in the open, the all of it. 

“Richie,” Eddie says, ignoring Connor completely and leaning into Richie’s space, trying to get him to look at him. “Richie, hey, it’s okay…”

Connor laughs and he sounds just like the clown. “But wait,” he jeers, “there’s more! Oh, I was just a passing infatuation, a crush. Oh, you know what? Do you know what, Eds?”

“Leave him alone!” Eddie yells, one arm wrapped protectively around Richie. Richie is staring at the ground, wondering if he can just will Connor away. There’s a ringing in his ears, and at every moment he’s expecting Eddie to look at him with disgust and outrage, to jump away from him like he’s been burned. 

“ _ Richie, Richie, dead in a ditchie _ ,” Connor sings and laughs. “Richie has a seeeecret. Oh, Eddie-Bear, Richie’s been keeping a secret about you for 27 years.” 

“Fuck off,” Eddie says, and he grabs for Richie’s wrists, pulls his hands away from his face. “Rich, hey. Pull it together.” 

Richie’s dragging in rattling breaths. He needs a cigarette, or a puff of Eddie’s inhaler, or something else. “Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck… I didn’t want…  _ Please _ , he’s just…”

“It’s okay,” Eddie says, hands firm on Richie’s shoulders. “Look at me. Just look at me. Richie…” He spares a glance back at Connor, who’s watching the exchange with glee. “Fuck it. Richie, I cheated on Myra. I cheated on my wife.” 

Richie looks at him like he’s staring through gauze. “What?”

“Yeah, mm-hmm,” Eddie says. “I’m not proud of it. It was a shitty thing to do, I know that. I cheated on Myra with… with a guy. A guy at my office. His name was Gary.”

Unbelievably, Richie laughs. “Gary?”

“Yeah, asshole,” Eddie says. His hands are warm on Richie’s shoulders. “Gary. Gary the claims adjuster. Go ahead, get your chucks out. Anyway the point is that no matter what the hell it is you’re scared to tell me, it can’t be fucking worse than me cheating on my wife with a claims adjuster named Gary. So there.” 

“So there…” Richie repeats, kind of in awe. 

Connor pipes up again then. “That’s adorable,” he sneers. “Turns out there’s two little fudgepacking fairies in Derry.” And then his face starts melting. Eddie screams, his fingers digging into the material of Richie’s shirt. Connor doesn’t melt down to black goo, though. Instead he changes, morphs and shifts into someone else. 

Big Bill glares at them from the closet, looking disgusted. Looking disappointed. “Eds, we all knew you were f-f-fucking useless,” he says. It’s the stutter that kills him. The stutter makes it feel real. “B-b-but Richie? You know I can’t trust you when you’ve b-been lying about who you are this whole time.”

“I’m sorry, Bill,” Richie says, sounding younger. “I just… I was just…” 

Eddie stares at not-Bill and then looks back at Richie. “You were just scared,” he says firmly. He knows about being scared. He’s been scared his entire life. “You were scared, Richie. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I lied to you,” Richie says. He sounds like he’s giving his own eulogy. “I lied, I lied to you, I shouldn’t’ve lied.”

“It’s okay.” Eddie moves his hands from Richie’s shoulders up to his face, bracketing him between his palms. “Look at me. Hey, look at me.” Richie does. “How you feel, what you want… that’s  _ yours _ , Rich. You don’t owe it to anyone. Not Bill, not your… adoring fucking fans, or whatever. Not me. It’s okay to keep secrets ’cause you’re scared.” 

“Is it?”

“Who fucking knows?” Eddie pulls him into a hug, like he can hold him tight enough that the years and the secrets won’t matter. 

Not-Bill watches with his lip curled in a grimace. And slowly, he begins to deteriorate. His eyes become bloodshot and slowly begin to dribble out of his eyesockets. His nose caves in. His skin droops, and his bones start to protrude from his skin. He more resembles Eddie’s leper than their friend. 

“Pennywise is gone,” Richie says, nodding to the cave behind them. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Leper Bill shambles forward, reaching out to them. Richie slams the SCARY door and leans against it, panting. Eddie tugs at his sleeve. “Let’s go, Rich.”

Richie stares down at his hand, still clutching the doorknob. “You  _ were  _ right, Eds,” he says. “I don’t write my own material.” 

“What? I know,” Eddie says. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

“All those jokes, they’re all made up,” he says. “They’re all other people’s lives. Me? I… I’ve never had a girlfriend, Eddie. I’ve never… I’ve never had a boyfriend.” He leans against the door. Maybe he can go back in there and Leper Bill will swallow him whole and he’ll never have to deal with any of this shit. “I’ve only… I was only ever in love with one person.” 

Eddie is still pulling at his sleeve, but his tugging seems less insistent now. “Yeah?” he says. “Was this person… handsome?” 

“Handsomest motherfucker in the world,” Richie confirms. He amends it— “Well, except for maybe Ben.” 

“Fuck you,” Eddie says.

“We should go.” Richie pushes away from the door, leaves Leper Bill and Connor and Street Fighter behind. Maybe not forever, but for now. Eddie grabs his hand and drags him away from the three doors, back to the real Bill, back to Mike and Ben and Beverly, back to It. Back to the fight. 


End file.
